The Murder of Miranda

Part IV

In November, Dr. Laurie MacGregor flew down from San Francisco to spend the Thanksgiving holiday with her husband, Tom Aragon. Considerable time was wasted on the problem of what to do with the live twenty-five-pound turkey which Smedler had sent to each of his employees from his brother-in-law’s turkey farm. The turkey, after a tranquilizing meal of grain sprinkled with vodka, was taken to the local children’s zoo, having lost no more than a few feathers and two friends.

At the club Mr. Henderson decorated the dining room with life-sized plastic skeletons, thus cutting some of the losses entailed by the Halloween Hoedown. People who questioned the propriety of the decorations were given an explanation which Henderson had cunningly devised to foil his critics. The skeletons were reminders of death and hence of the resurrection, for which everyone should be thankful on Thanksgiving. Little Miss Reach, who was ninety and closer to the subject than most, suggested that it would have been better to wait until Easter. Henderson made a note of this for future reference. There was a chance, however slight, that he and maybe even Miss Reach would still be around by Easter.

For Christmas, Cordelia Young received a new Mercedes from her parents. Her thank-you speech was brief: “Oh, dammit, I wanted a Ferrari.”

During the same week Mr. and Mrs. Quinn were sent official notice from Mr. Tolliver, Headmaster, that their son Frederic would not be welcome back for the spring term or any period thereafter. Frederic’s speech was also brief: “Hurray!” Mrs. Quinn told Frederic her heart was broken. Mr. Quinn said his was, too, but Mrs. Quinn said hers was more broken than his. During the ensuing argument Frederic was forgotten. He went up to his room, retrieved his Hate List from under the desk blotter where it was hidden and crossed off Mr. Tolliver’s name. It was silly to waste a lot of good clean Hate.

On New Year’s Eve, Charles Van Eyck attended the Regimental Ball to keep alive his contempt for the military in general and his brother-in-law, Admiral Young, in particular. He went through the receiving line three times, audibly noting the amount of gold braid and ornamental hardware and estimating their cost to the taxpayer. His sister, Iris, struck him on the shin with her cane. The Admiral was more tactful:

“My dear Charles, I’m afraid you’ve had too much to drink. You mustn’t make an ass of yourself.”

“Why not?” Van Eyck said amiably. “All you fellows are doing it.”

Van Eyck was also busy during February.

Amy Lou Worthington received anonymous and somewhat belated acknowledgment of her deflowering in the form of a sympathy card: “Sorry to Hear of Your Loss.”

Ellen Brewster found on her desk an old-fashioned lace-and-satin valentine with an old-fashioned message:

Van Eyck had brought it up to date and more in line with his sentiments by penciling out the last line.

Ellen went out to the terrace to thank him in person, but Van Eyck was having one of his sudden and mysterious attacks of deafness. He cupped his right ear and said, “Eh? What’s that? Speak up.”

“The valentine.”

“Eh?”

“Thank you for the valentine.”

“Eh?”

“An earthquake has struck Los Angeles and the entire city is in ruins.”

“It’s about time,” Van Eyck said. “I predicted this forty years ago.”

At intervals throughout the fall and winter Aragon thought of Miranda Shaw. He’d heard nothing about her at the office, and when he remembered to ask, it was always at an inconvenient time — the middle of the night or over the weekend when the office was closed or during Smedler’s and Charity’s separate but equal vacations.

It was in April that he saw her on the street, waiting outside the entrance to an underground garage that served a block of stores downtown. Whatever had happened to her during the past months, she had kept up appearances. She was perfectly groomed, her hair in a French twist at the nape of her neck, her dress a flowered silk with a voluminous pleated skirt and scarf. Though she was small, and standing very quietly, she couldn’t help being conspicuous among the housewives hurrying to sales and the clerks and secretaries to their jobs. The dress was too fancy and her makeup too theatrical for nine o’clock in the morning.

At closer range he noticed the subtle changes in her. Her red-gold hair seemed a little brassier and there were blue circles under her eyes and lines around her mouth that the makeup didn’t hide.

“Good morning, Mrs. Shaw.”

“Why, Mr. Aragon. How nice to see you again.”

They shook hands. Hers was thin and dry as paper.

“You’re looking very well, Mrs. Shaw.”

“I’m surviving. One mustn’t be greedy.” She hesitated, glancing over her shoulder as though checking for eavesdroppers. “I suppose you know my husband’s will went through probate in February and the bad news became official. He spent all of his own money and a great deal of other people’s.”

“How have you been living?”

“Strangely.”

“Strangely?”

“I believe that’s a fair way to describe it,” she said with a faint smile. “I have a job. It’s not exactly what I would have chosen but it makes me self-supporting for the first time in my life. I even have a social security number. Yes, it’s all quite official, I’m a working woman. Surprised, aren’t you?”

“A little.”

“The salary isn’t much but I get room and board and I won’t starve. Do you remember Ellen Brewster at the Penguin Club?”

“Oh yes.”

“It was her idea. I never thought I had anything worth teaching anyone, but apparently I do... Here they come now. Pretend we’re not talking about them.”

He didn’t have a chance to wonder who “they” were. Cordelia and Juliet were emerging from the underground garage, blinking in the sun like giant moles. They looked at Aragon without recognition or interest. He had no part in their world, there was only room for two.

“Cordelia rammed a concrete pillar,” Juliet said. “But it wasn’t her fault. There was an arrow pointing left and an arrow pointing right and she couldn’t make up her mind, so she hit the pillar which was in the middle.”

“An honest mistake,” Cordelia admitted cheerfully. “It could happen to anyone.”

“But especially you,” Juliet said.

“We learned a lesson from it, though.”

“It’s a dumb way to learn a lesson. Which I didn’t anyway.”

“You did so. You found out a Mercedes is no better than any other car when it comes up against concrete. Crash, bang, crunch, just like an ordinary Cadillac.”

“Pops won’t care but Mrs. Young will be furious.”

“Girls,” Miranda said. “Girls, please. Forget the car for a moment and pay attention to your manners. I’ve told you repeatedly not to refer to Admiral Young as Pops. He is your father. Wouldn’t it sound better to call him that?”

Cordelia shook her head. “Father is what you call somebody with his collar on backwards. Or like in our father who art in heaven. That kind of father belongs to everybody.”

“Our personal father is Pops,” Juliet said. “His wife is Mrs. Young.”

“Girls, please. I don’t want to be harsh with you but I must ask you not to call your mother Mrs. Young.”

“Why not? You do.”

“She’s not my mother.”

“She may not be ours either,” Cordelia said. “We have no proof. Anyway, she’d just as soon not be.”

“She hates us,” Juliet explained. “We don’t mind. We hate her back. She hates you, too, but you can’t hate her back because you’re a lady and ladies never get to do anything they want to.”

Both girls thought this was extremely funny. Cordelia screamed with laughter and Juliet’s face turned bright pink and she had to wipe her eyes and nose on the sleeve of her wool sweater, which was very absorbent and ideal for the purpose.

Miranda stood quietly, her only sign of emotion a deepening of the lines around her mouth. “You are attracting attention. I want it stopped immediately or I’ll report every word of this conversation to your mother. Now run along and start your shopping and I’ll meet you at Peterson’s in the shoe department in half an hour. I have to go and check how much damage was done to the car.”

Cordelia had the last word. “Not enough.”

Miranda watched them walk briskly down the street arm in arm and still laughing. Then she turned back to Aragon. “I told you I’ve been living strangely. This is it. I’m supposed to teach the girls etiquette and the social graces. As you must have observed, I’m not a very good teacher.”

“They’re not very good students,” Aragon said. “Hang in there anyway.”

“I don’t have a choice.”

“Not now. But perhaps eventually...”

“Eventually sounds so far in the future. I’m not sure I can wait.”

He didn’t ask about Grady and she didn’t volunteer any information. Grady seemed as far in the past as “eventually” seemed in the future.

A few weeks later, returning to his office after lunch, he found a message on his desk from Ellen Brewster asking him to drop by the Penguin Club on a personal matter. He went as soon as he’d finished work for the day.

It was five thirty, cold and overcast, as it often was in May. The club had made the transition from fall to spring with only minor adjustments — a fresh coat of paint on the walls, a change of greenery in the redwood planters, different pads on the chairs and chaises, and a new lifeguard, a short, stocky young man with a blanket draped over his head and shoulders. He appeared ready and willing to save lives, but the pool was unoccupied.

The seasonal changes in Ellen were more obvious. She had shorter hair, curled and frosted at the tips, and she wore oversized sunglasses and lipstick so glossy it made her mouth look like wet vinyl. He wondered about the sunglasses. There hadn’t been any sun for a week.

“I’m glad you came,” she said, sounding glad. “Would you like some coffee?”

“Fine.”

“Let’s go in the snack bar. No one will be there at this time of day.”

She was almost right. The only customer was an old man with a copy of Fortune open on the table in front of him. His eyes were closed and his chin rested on his collarbone. He was either asleep or dead; no one seemed interested in finding out which.

A fat pink-cheeked blonde stood behind the counter filing her nails. She gave Ellen a bored look.

“The snack bar’s closed. I’m just waiting for my ride.”

“Isn’t there some coffee left?”

“It’s stale.”

“We’ll take it.”

“You’ll have to pour it yourself and drink it black. I’m off duty and we’re out of cream.”

The verbal exchange or the sudden honking of an automobile horn outside the rear door had wakened the old man.

“What’s happening around here? Can’t a man read in peace?”

“It’s time to go home, Mr. Van Eyck,” Ellen said. “The snack bar is closed.”

“No, it’s not. I’m here.”

“You shouldn’t be.”

“I don’t see any Closed sign posted on the door.”

“I’m posting it in a minute.”

“What about that fellow with you? Wait till Henderson hears about this, you sneaking young men into the snack bar after hours.”

“Mr. Aragon is my lawyer.”

“Have you done something illegal?”

“Not yet,” Ellen said. “But I’m thinking of committing a murder.”

“Think again. You’d never get away with it. You lack the finesse, the savoir-faire, and you have childish fits of temper.”

“Please go home, Mr. Van Eyck.”

“If you insist. Though I resent being evicted in order that you may conduct a rendezvous with a young man who doesn’t look any more like a lawyer than I do. Where did he go to law school?”

“Hastings,” Aragon said.

“Never heard of it.” Van Eyck picked up his magazine and left. In spite of his shuffling gait and a pronounced list to starboard he moved with considerable speed.

Aragon tasted the coffee. The fat blonde had been right. It was stale and bitter and lukewarm. He couldn’t do anything about the age and temperature but he added a pinch of salt to take away the bitterness.

“I can get you a year’s honorary membership in the club,” Ellen said.

“Why would you want to do that?”

“I can’t afford to pay you and it wouldn’t be fair for me to ask your advice for nothing.”

“This coffee ought to cover two cents’ worth. Ask ahead.”

“I had a letter from Grady yesterday.”

“Where is he?”

“Las Vegas.” She took off her sunglasses and he saw why she’d worn them in the first place. Her eyes were red and slightly swollen. “He wants to come back here.”

“It’s a free country. He doesn’t need your permission or mine.”

“No, but he needs money and a job, so it’s not all that free, is it...? Here, I’d like you to read it.”

She took a small envelope from her pocket and handed it to Aragon. It had been postmarked five days previously in Las Vegas and in the upper left corner was the address of a motel chain that showed porn films. Grady might have worked there, stayed there, or simply borrowed its writing paper.

“‘Mrs. Shaw and all that water under the bridge,’” Aragon repeated. “Grady has such a sensitive nature.”

“He feels guilty, I’m sure he does. It’s just — he doesn’t express himself on paper very well.”

“Oh, I don’t know. I think that’s rather a cute way of saying he ran off in her thirty-thousand-dollar car and left her broke in a foreign country.”

She rubbed the sunglasses up and down the lapel of her jacket a few times before putting them back on. It was either a stall or an attempt to clear up the view she had through them.

“That’s what I need your advice about. Suppose he comes back to Santa Felicia. Whether or not he gets a job at the club, Miranda is bound to find out about it. Can she prosecute him?”

“Without knowing all the details of the case, I’d say she could at least sue him for the return of the car.”

“He probably doesn’t have it anymore.”

“Then she can be a good sport and forgive and forget,” Aragon said. “If I were Grady, though, I wouldn’t depend on Miranda being a good sport. She’s not built for it.”

“Could she have him put in jail?”

“Judges and juries decide things like that, lawyers don’t.”

“If there’s any chance he’ll be punished, I’ve got to warn him to stay away.”

“Why?”

“You read the letter,” she said with a wry little smile. “He’s an old friend and I’m a real peach. Aren’t us real peaches expected to do things like that?”

“I guess you are.”

“Well?”

“Check with Miranda. She might not want him punished any more than you do. Ask her.”

“I can’t ask her without letting on that I’ve heard from him and know where he is.”

“Make it a hypothetical question.”

“I don’t believe I could fool her. We’ve become pretty well acquainted during the past six months.”

“How?”

“Seeing each other here at the club. She isn’t a member anymore, she can’t afford the dues, but she comes in with Admiral Young’s daughters. While they swim and have lunch she talks to me in the office. She could swim and have lunch if she wanted to — Mr. Henderson would be glad to bend the rule about employees of members not being allowed the privileges of members. She won’t accept any favors, though. Or maybe she just likes to get away from the girls whenever she can... Did you know she was working?”

“I met her on the street a couple of weeks ago. She told me you’d gotten her a job.”

“Not really. It was my suggestion, that’s all. She wasn’t trained for anything except being a lady, and there’s not much demand for teaching ladyness or ladyship or whatever. Then I thought of Admiral Young’s daughters and I suggested to him one day that perhaps Miranda Shaw could teach the girls some of the social graces they lacked. He approved of the idea.”

“The girls were with Miranda when I saw her,” Aragon said. “I didn’t notice much improvement in their ladyshipness.”

“No results were guaranteed. I doubt that the Admiral expected any. He’s a wise man, he was probably only trying to help Miranda.”

“And you?”

“What do you mean and me?”

“What was your motive?”

“I’m a nice girl,” she said. “Haven’t you noticed?”

“Yes. I also noticed you’d been crying. Why?”

“I went to a sad movie. Or I saw a little dog that looked like one I had when I was a kid. Or I remembered my favorite aunt who died last year. Check one of the above.”

“Check none of the above. And you mustn’t add your tears to ‘all that water under the bridge’ Grady mentioned.”

“How can I avoid it?”

“Don’t answer his letter. Don’t tell him to come, don’t warn him to stay away. Just stay out of it.”

“That’s a lot of advice in return for a stale cup of coffee.”

“I drank the coffee. Are you going to take the advice?”

“Sorry, it’s too late,” she said. “I sent him the application form yesterday afternoon.”

The girls liked to put on their pajamas and eat dinner in the upstairs sitting room with their cat, Snowball, while watching television. Miranda’s arrival had changed all that. She insisted they appear at the table properly dressed, on their best behavior and without the cat. This rule applied especially when guests were expected.

Retired military friends of the Admiral stopped on their way through town now and then, and once a month Charles Van Eyck came to see his sister, Iris, motivated not so much by duty as by expedience. Iris possessed a great deal of money which she would one day have to abandon for more spiritual satisfactions. Though considerably younger than he, she was unwell and unhappy and the combination gave him hopes of outliving her. These hopes changed daily like the stock market, gaining a few points here, losing a few there. As an investment the monthly dinner was becoming more and more speculative. Iris seemed to thrive on adversity. Arthritis and a recent heart attack gave her an excuse to do only what she wanted to do, and unhappiness made her oblivious to the needs and desires of other people and the fact that blood was thicker than water.

By his own standards Van Eyck was not greedy but he liked to think about money and he enjoyed its company. He studied his savings-account books and various senior citizens’ publications. He visited his safety-deposit boxes and later he would sit in the lobby eating the free cookies and drinking the free coffee. He knew that the cookies and coffee were not actually free, that he was paying for them one way or another, so he ate and drank as much as he could before bank employees started giving him dirty looks. The dirty looks were free.

Lately Van Eyck had another reason for his regular visits to his sister. He distrusted all women, especially the pretty ones like Miranda Shaw. When she was first hired he wrote an anonymous letter to his sister which began You have taken a Jezzebel into your home... For several days he carried the letter around in his pocket in a sealed stamped correctly addressed envelope, afraid to post it. Iris with her sharp mind and suspicious nature might trace it back to him, and besides, he had a nagging doubt about the spelling of Jezebel. Jezebelle was more literal, Jezebell had a ring to it, Jezebel looked somehow unfinished. He thought of burning the letter but he hated to waste the stamp and some of the clever descriptive material about Miranda Shaw, so he sent it anyway.

To Miranda herself, who opened the door for him, he was polite, even gallant.

“Ah, my dear, how elegant you look this evening.”

“Thank you, Mr. Van Eyck. Mrs. Young and the Admiral will be down shortly. May I pour you a drink?”

“Pour ahead.”

“Your usual Scotch on the rocks?”

“One rock. I’m very Scotch.”

It was his favorite joke and entirely original, but all Miranda did was smile with one side of her mouth as if she were saving the other side for a later and a better joke. He changed the subject abruptly. There was no use aiming his best shots into a wilderness.

“What are we having for dinner?”

“Beef Wellington.”

“Why can’t we ever have something tasty like pot roast or chicken stew with dumplings?”

“The housekeeper received a French cookbook for Christmas.”

“Wellington was an English duke. Very cheeky of them to name a French dish after him. I intend to pour ketchup all over it.”

“I do wish you wouldn’t, Mr. Van Eyck. The housekeeper was very perturbed last time.”

“I’ll go out to the kitchen, find the ketchup wherever she’s hidden it and bring it right to the table. Beef Wellington indeed. The poor man is probably turning over in his grave smothered in all that greasy foreign pastry.”

“Please reconsider about the ketchup,” Miranda said. “It will set a bad example for the girls.”

The girls were all ready for a bad example. Inside the confines of their best dresses they squirmed and sighed and made faces. Cordelia’s lime-green silk had a sash so tight it divided her in two like an egg-timer, and Juliet wore her tattletale dress, a bouffant taffeta that responded noisily to the most discreet movement, crackling, rustling, complaining, almost as though it had a life of its own.

The girls sat side by side at the mahogany table across from Van Eyck and Miranda, who had done the setting herself — silver bowls floating camellias and miniature candles, and crystal bird vases with sprigs of daphne that scented the whole room. The Admiral at the head of the table complimented Miranda on the decorations, but Iris, opposite him, said she hated candles, flickering lights always gave her a migraine. She asked Cordelia to blow out the candles.

“I can’t,” Cordelia said.

“Why not?”

“I haven’t enough breath. My dress is too tight. I think I’m going to faint.”

“So am I,” Juliet said loyally.

Their mother didn’t seem particularly interested. She had the little poodle, Alouette, on her lap and was feeding it bits of shrimp from her seafood cocktail.

The sight infuriated Cordelia. “I don’t see why you can bring that dog to the table and we’re not allowed to bring Snowball, who loves shrimp. Shrimp is his very favorite thing.”

“What were you saying about your dress, Cordelia?”

“It’s too tight. I can’t breathe. I’m going to faint.”

“Don’t be tiresome.”

“I mean it. I’m going, here I go— One, two—”

“Well, hurry up and get it over with so the rest of us can eat. The food will be cold.”

“You don’t care.”

“Of course I do,” Iris said. “I’m hungry.”

Frustrated, Cordelia turned her wrath on her uncle. “It’s all your fault. We had to dress like this just for you.”

Van Eyck looked surprised. “Like what?”

“This.”

“Up.” Juliet said. “We had to dress up like this just for you.”

“Really? Whose bizarre idea was that?”

“Hers.” Both girls answered simultaneously, scowling at Miranda across the table.

“She said well-bred young ladies always dress up for company,” Cordelia explained. “And I said Uncle Charles isn’t company, he’s only a relative. And Juliet said you wouldn’t notice anyway because you’d be three sheets to the wind.”

“You said that about me, Juliet?”

“I may have,” Juliet said. “But she’s a pig to bring it up.”

“Unfortunately, my dear nieces, I am not three sheets to the wind. I am not even one sheet or two, let alone three. But I’m certainly working on it... Cooper, let’s have some of that special stuff you’ve been hoarding. I understand that when a military man retires he commandeers all the booze he can lay his hands on. Why not share it with us common folk who paid for it in the first place?”

Cooper Young had learned many years ago at Annapolis to eat quietly and quickly whatever was placed in front of him and retained this habit throughout his life. As a consequence, eating was not enjoyable but it was also not unbearable. He could listen without heartburn while Iris and the girls bickered during the salad course, and his brother-in-law, over the beef and asparagus, delivered a lecture on the sinful extravagances of the Pentagon. Cooper did not answer, did not argue. Now and again he glanced at Miranda, who was equally silent, and he noticed how skillfully she pretended to eat while only rearranging the food on her plate and raising an empty fork to her mouth.

Cherries jubilee.

Cordelia was allowed to flame the cherries as a reward for not fainting, and everyone was quiet while they burned. Then it was time for Miranda to provide the evening’s entertainment, a report on the girls’ progress since the last family dinner.

“This week,” Miranda said, “we have been concentrating on attitudes that affect behavior, for example, self-fulfillment as opposed to selfish fulfillment. We made a list of questions to ask ourselves at the end of each day. We gave them a special name, didn’t we, Juliet?”

“Yes, but—”

“What was it?”

“Questions for a summer night. But—”

“Can you recite them?”

“I can,” Cordelia said, still basking in the warmth and glory of the cherries jubilee. “Questions for a summer night. Here they are:

“Have I earned something today?

“Have I learned something today?

“Have I helped someone?

“Have I felt glad to be alive?”

“How poetic,” Iris said. “And what are the answers for a summer night?”

Juliet and her dress complained in unison. “I didn’t know we were expected to have the answers, too. Memorizing the questions is hard enough. Anyway, it isn’t even summer yet. By the time it comes, maybe I can think of some answers.”

“Don’t be an ass, there aren’t any,” Cordelia said crisply. “It’s only a game.”

“It can’t be. A game is where somebody wins and somebody loses. I should know, I’m the one who always loses.”

“No, you don’t. You only remember the times you lose because you’re such a rotten sport. I often let you win to avoid the sight of you bawling and blabbering.”

Juliet appealed to Miranda, wistfully, “Is it only a game?”

“No indeed,” Miranda said. “I believe they’re very important questions.”

“But how can I earn anything? I don’t work.”

“You could earn someone’s respect and admiration. Any job well done is worthy of respect. Can you think of a job you did today?”

“I washed the cat, Snowball. He had fleas.”

“You see? That’s something you earned today, Snowball’s gratitude.”

“No. He hates being washed and he still has fleas. I got seven more bites on the belly.”

“I’ve got at least twenty-five,” Cordelia said.

“Not on the belly.”

“I haven’t searched there yet. Most of mine are on the wrists and ankles. They itch furiously but I don’t dare scratch because Mrs. Young is looking.”

Iris was listening as well as looking. “If you girls have fleas, I don’t want you coming anywhere near my dog.”

“We never do. He comes near us.”

“Then run away from him.”

“He can run faster than we can. And also, he cheats by taking shortcuts under tables and things.”

“I suggest,” Miranda said, “that we consider the second question. Have you learned something today?”

Cordelia related what she’d learned, that the Pentagon was spending billions of dollars each year on uniforms and pensions while the average citizen was being taxed into oblivion. Van Eyck, with his second sheet to the wind and going for three, applauded vigorously and said by God, at least there was one sensible person in the family besides himself.

Juliet couldn’t think of anything she’d learned for the first time, though she had learned for the fourteenth or fifteenth time that cats didn’t like to be bathed and neither did fleas but it wasn’t fatal to either.

In spite of her makeup Miranda was beginning to look pale. “Perhaps we should go on to the third question. Have you helped someone today?”

“They have helped me decide to go to bed,” Iris said and slid the little dog off her lap and onto the floor. “Miranda, I’d like to speak to you privately up in my room... Cooper, show Charles to his car and don’t give him any more to drink... Goodnight, Charles. It was good of you to come. Take care of your liver.”

She was tired. Her thin yellowing face sagged with fatigue and she had to use the table and her cane to hoist herself to her feet. It was a heavy antique cane she’d brought from Africa, where it had once been part of a tribal chiefs ceremonial uniform. Iris continued to think of it like that, as an adjunct to her costume, and she refused even to try the lightweight aluminum crutches prescribed by her doctor. Crutches were for cripples. Her cane was a piece of history and a symbol of command, not dependence.

The procession moved up the staircase, slow and solemn as a funeral march, Iris leaning on the banister and her cane, taking one step at a time. Miranda walked behind her, then the two girls, and finally the little dog, Alouette. The shrimp and cherries had given Alouette the hiccups and their rhythmic sound accompanied the procession like the beat of a ghostly drum.

The Admiral escorted his brother-in-law to the front door.

“Iris is damned rude,” Van Eyck said, straightening his tie and brushing off his coat as if he’d been physically ejected. “She’s the one who should be taking lessons in the social amenities, though it’s about fifty years too late.”

“I’m sorry you feel insulted.”

“My liver is a very personal thing. I may never return to this house.”

“We shall miss you, Charles.”

“Don’t be in such a hurry to miss me. I haven’t left yet. I might change my mind and take that nightcap you offered me.”

“I didn’t offer you one.”

“Why not?”

“Iris told me not to.”

“But she’s gone to bed. This is between you and me.”

“I’m afraid not,” the Admiral said. “Now do you think you’ll be able to get home all right? If there’s any doubt, I can drive you or call a cab.”

“Don’t worry about me, old boy. Just take care of yourself.”

“What do you mean, Charles?”

“She’s a sleek little filly, that Miranda, with plenty of mileage left in her. And don’t tell me you didn’t notice. I saw you staring at her.”

“I don’t believe we should refer to a lady in terms of horseflesh.”

“You didn’t stare at her as if she was a lady,” Van Eyck said. “You old Navy men never change. Girl in every port, that sort of thing.”

“I never had a girl in every port. Hardly any port, as a matter of fact.”

“Why not? I understand the military feel that it’s their prerogative to—”

“Go home, Charles.”

“That’s damned rude.”

“Yes.”

“I’m a taxpayer.”

“Yes.”

“You’ll rue the day.”

“I’ve lost count of the days I’m going to rue,” the Admiral said, opening the door. “Probably up in the thousands by this time... Goodnight, Charles. Drive carefully. The Pentagon can’t afford to lose a taxpayer.”

The girls listened at the door of Iris’s room on the second floor. They could hear her talking to Miranda in the loud firm voice that was stronger than the rest of her and needed no support from cane or crutches. The words were too fast to be intelligible. They crashed into each other and splintered into sharp angry syllables.

“She’s mad,” Cordelia said. “Well, for once we didn’t do anything.”

Juliet wasn’t so sure. “Maybe we did, unbeknownst.”

“We never do anything unbeknownst. It’s always spelled right out. She’s probably mad at her.”

“I wonder why.”

“Maybe it was those questions for a summer night. The whole thing’s pretty silly when you think of it. Why not a winter night? Or autumn?”

“Summer sounds better.”

“But it’s not sensible. On summer nights people are outside barbecuing steaks or playing tennis. It’s on winter nights they have nothing to do but sit around making up dumb questions.”

“I hate those questions,” Juliet said. “I just hate them. They give me the glooms.”

“Don’t be an ass. They’re only words.”

“No. She means them. ‘Have I earned something today?’ How can I earn something when I don’t have a job? Maybe we should run away and get jobs, Cordelia. Do you think we could?”

“No.”

“Not even a lowly type like washing dishes in a restaurant?”

“They don’t wash dishes in restaurants. They toss them into a machine.”

“Someone has to toss them. We could be tossers.”

“I don’t want to be a tosser,” Cordelia said. “Now wake up and smell the coffee. We’re not good for anything, so we might as well enjoy it.”

The heavy oak door of Iris’s room opened and Miranda came into the hall with the poodle, Alouette, on a leash beside her. The girls hid behind a bookcase and watched her go down the stairs. She moved very slowly, as if she was tired, while the little dog strained at the leash trying to pull her along.

“We never get to walk the dog anymore since she came,” Cordelia said. “It’s not fair.”

“We could walk the cat.”

“No, we can’t. We tried that once and Snowball just sat down and wouldn’t budge. We had to drag him around the block and someone reported us to the Humane Society and they sent a man out to investigate.”

Juliet’s memory was soft and warm as a pillow. She remembered the Humane Society incident as a nice young man stopping his truck to make complimentary remarks about the cat; and the Singapore incident, which Cordelia frequently referred to in a sinister manner, Juliet couldn’t remember at all. She took her sister’s word that it had happened (whatever it was) because Cordelia had more sophistication and experience than she did, being two years older. By virtue of this age gap, and the phenomenal number of things that must have occurred during it, Cordelia had become an authority who dispensed information and advice like a vending machine.

“In fact,” Cordelia said, “we’re not allowed to do practically anything since she came. We may have to get rid of her. It shouldn’t be too hard if we plan ahead.”

“I’m sick of always talking about her. I want to talk about us for a change. You and me.”

“What about us.”

“Do you think we’ll ever get a second chance?”

“To do what?”

“Be born. Will we ever be born again?”

“I hope to Christ not,” Cordelia said. “Once was bad enough.”

“But it might be different if we had a second chance. We might be good for something. We might even be pretty. And something else. This time I might be born first, two years ahead of you.”

Juliet knew immediately that she’d gone too far. She turned and ran down the hall to her room, locking the door behind her and barricading it with a bureau in case Cordelia decided to pick the lock with one of her credit cards.

She took a shower and before putting on her pajamas she counted her fleabites. Twenty-eight. A record. She scratched them all until they bled. If she bled to death, right then and there, she would speed up her chances of being born again, brilliant, beautiful and two years ahead of Cordelia.

At ten thirty the Admiral began closing up the house for the night, checking each room for security purposes, making sure that windows were locked and no intruders lurked in closets or behind doors. The job took a long time partly because he enjoyed it and partly because there were so many rooms, some of them never or hardly ever used.

The drawing room, off the foyer, was opened only for formal entertaining. Its elegant little gold chairs looked too fragile to hold a sitter and its Aubusson rugs too exquisite to be stepped on. The walls were hung with gilt-framed family portraits which had, like most of the furniture, been included in the purchase price of the house. For reasons of her own, Iris allowed visitors to think the pictures were of her ancestors, but in fact the amply proportioned ladies and the men with their muttonchop whiskers were as unknown as the artists who painted them. The thrifty Dutchmen who were Iris’s real ancestors would have considered such portraits a sinful extravagance.

Next to the living room was the conservatory, which contained an old rosewood grand piano with a broken pedal and ivory keys yellow as saffron. Now and then the Admiral would sit down at the piano and try to pick out melodies he’d learned in his youth: “Shenandoah,” “The Blue Bells of Scotland,” “Poor Wayfaring Stranger,” “Flow Gently, Sweet Afton.” But no matter how softly he played, how tightly the doors and windows were closed, Iris always heard and thumped with her cane or sent the housekeeper or the girls to tell him to stop. He opened the lid of the piano, played the first few bars of Brahms’ “Lullaby” and replaced the lid almost before any of the notes had a chance to climb the stairs. Then he went on with his job of checking the house.

The solarium, facing south, had an inside wall faucet and a tile floor that slanted down to a screened hole in the middle in order to allow the draining of plants after they were watered. There was only one plant left in the place, a weeping fig which had grown too large to move. The Admiral watered it every night, knowing that at some time, perhaps quite soon, the fig would break out of its clay prison. He usually stayed in this room longer than in any of the others, as though he wanted to be a witness to the plant’s exact moment of escape, to hear the noise (big or small? he had no idea) and see a crack in the clay (perhaps a series of cracks, a shattering, an explosion, a room full of shards).

Across the hall the game room had walnut-paneled walls and a billiard table with a rip in it. Year after year the Admiral postponed having the rip repaired. It unnerved the very good players, thus giving the poorer ones like himself a psychological advantage. Beside the library there was a sewing room where no one sewed. Perhaps when the house had been built it was the custom for the women to do petit point or embroidery while the men played billiards. Now the space was a catchall for steamer trunks and suitcases, the housekeeper’s reducing machine, a pair of carved teakwood chests Iris had carted halfway around the world, a vacuum cleaner that didn’t work, the ski equipment the girls had used at their school in Geneva. Though the equipment was well worn, the boots scuffed, the webs of the poles bent out of shape, he was amazed that the girls had ever skied. Juliet seemed too timid to try, Cordelia too reckless to survive. No matter how hard he attempted to picture them skiing in a nice average way down a nice average slope, he could only imagine Cordelia plunging headlong from Mt. Blanc like an avalanche and Juliet having to be dragged up the smallest knoll and pushed down screaming. Perhaps there never were any nice average slopes in the girls’ lives.

The library was in another wing of the house. It had brown leather chairs that smelled of saddle soap. The floor-to-ceiling shelves of books were behind glass and the mantel of the fireplace was decorated with ceramic songbirds. It was a comfortable room, but the Admiral rarely sat there to read or to watch the fire. The bookshelves were locked and he could never remember where he’d put the key; and because of a defective damper the fireplace smoked badly and all the birds had turned grey as if from old age.

The adjoining room was where Iris spent most of her time. Here, too, there was a fireplace, but its logs were artificial and its flames gas. Iris wasn’t strong enough to handle real logs in a real grate. Sometimes she couldn’t even light the gas without help from Miranda or the housekeeper. The Admiral turned off the gas and the lamp by Iris’s reading chair and the other lamp that lit the table where half a dozen miniature chess sets were laid out, each with a game in progress. These were the games Iris was playing by mail with people in other parts of the world. To the Admiral it seemed a little like war to have unseen opponents in foreign countries planning strategic moves against you. But no blood was shed, nothing was lost but prestige.

The kitchen and the rooms beyond it he left alone. They were the working and living quarters of Mrs. Norgate, the housekeeper, and he depended on her as he would have depended on a chief petty officer to keep her part of the ship tight and tidy.

He returned to the front of the house at the same time as Miranda was coming in the door with the little poodle. She’d put a coat over the formal dress she’d worn at dinner, but it offered little protection from the spring fog. She looked cold and damp and her voice was hoarse.

“Alouette wanted to come home. He acts afraid of the dark lately.”

“He might have trouble with his vision,” the Admiral said. “I understand poodles often do as they get older. Perhaps I should take him to the vet.”

“What happens to their vision?”

“Cataracts, I believe.”

“Like people.”

“Yes. Like people.”

She let the dog off the leash and it bounded up the stairs. “He seems all right now. Maybe he simply wanted to get back to his mistress.”

“Miranda—”

“I’d better go upstairs and open the door for him so that Mrs. Young won’t be disturbed.”

“Miranda, I’m sorry about the dinner tonight.”

“You’re sorry?” she repeated. “That’s funny, I was just going to tell you that I was sorry. It was my responsibility. I should have made better plans.”

“No, no. Your plans were fine. Those ‘questions for a summer night,’ I thought that was an excellent idea.”

“Mrs. Young didn’t.”

“Mrs. Young’s illness makes her hard to please. You mustn’t take her opinions too seriously. She doesn’t mean to disparage your abilities.”

“She means to and she’s right. I’m not qualified for a position like this, I’m not qualified for anything. It’s useless for me to keep on pretending.”

“Sit down, Miranda. I’ll get you a drink to warm you up.”

There was a bench along one wall that looked as if it had once been a pew in a small church. She sat down, shivering, pulling the coat around her. It was several sizes too large. The poodle had been in such a hurry to go out that she’d grabbed the coat out of the hall closet without knowing or caring whom it belonged to.

“A drink won’t change how I feel,” she said.

“It might. Let me—”

“Those questions for a summer night, what a joke. Hundreds of summer nights have passed, and fall and winter and spring, and I couldn’t answer one of those questions positively. I haven’t earned or learned or helped or felt glad to be alive.”

“You’ve made me feel glad to be alive.”

“You mustn’t say nice things like that. You’ll make me cry.”

“Please don’t. I insist you don’t, Miranda.”

Her face was hidden in the collar of the coat, her voice barely audible. “All right.”

“You won’t cry.”

“No.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

“Thank you.” He cleared his throat as if it were his voice, not hers, being muffled in the folds of the coat. “Actually you’re the best thing that’s happened to this household for a long time and we’re all grateful to you. I hope you’re not planning to leave.”

“I’m not accomplishing anything here.”

“But you are. There’s a definite improvement in the girls’ behavior. They’re less self-centered, more responsive to other people. At dinner, for instance, they talked directly to their Uncle Charles instead of around him to each other. Did you notice that?”

“Everyone noticed,” she said. “Especially Uncle Charles.”

“It was a step up from ignoring him, as they’re in the habit of doing. But I’m not only thinking of the girls when I ask you to stay with us. I’m being quite selfish. In fact... well, you must be aware of how happy I am in your presence, Miranda.”

“No.” She’d hardly been aware of him at all except as a figure in the background, like one of Iris’s ivory and wooden chess pieces. Now suddenly he was stepping off the board alive, making sounds, having feelings, being happy and unhappy. It frightened her. She wanted him to step back on the chessboard where he belonged.

The girls, reconciled by this time, were hiding behind the railing at the top of the stairs.

“He said he was happy with her presents,” Juliet whispered. “I’ve never seen her give him any presents. I wonder what kind they are.”

“Use your imagination, stupid.”

“You mean hanky-panky? Surely they wouldn’t commit hanky-panky with Mrs. Young right in the house.”

“They wouldn’t have to. Pops has tons of room in the back seat of the Rolls.”

“Do you think we should tell Mrs. Young?”

“My God, no,” Cordelia said. “She’d probably blame us. Let her find out for herself.”

Miranda stayed for two months.

During this time the weather remained cold and Van Eyck blamed it on the environmentalist members of the municipal government, accusing them of trying to limit the city’s growth by controlling the weather. He wasn’t sure how this was being done, but he wrote letters to alert the daily newspaper, the Chamber of Commerce and, in case more inspired revelations and clout were necessary, the bishop of the Episcopalian diocese.

At the beginning of June, Frederic Quinn was released from the high-priced detention facility Sophrosune School, and before being transported to the high-priced detention facility Camp Sierra Williwaw, he had a whole month of freedom. He intended to make the most of it.

He collected a dozen starfish from the wharf pilings and put them in the ovens at the club to dry out. The ensuing stench permeated the ballroom, drifted through the corridors into the cabanas, hung over the pool and terrace. The entire staff was pressed into service to track down the source, but no one thought of opening the ovens until it was time to start cooking for the Saturday night banquet.

Mr. Henderson immediately blamed Frederic, who had made the common criminal mistake of hanging around to see how things turned out.

“By God, this time you’ve gone too far, you bastard.”

“I didn’t do it, I didn’t, I didn’t!”

He swore his innocence on the small Bible which he carried around in his pocket for this very purpose. It was one of the more useful things he had learned at Sophrosune School.

Some of his exploits were more or less in the interests of science. He jumped off the thirty-three-foot diving platform holding a beach umbrella to see if it could be used as a parachute. It couldn’t. After that, the cast on his left wrist curtailed his activities to a certain extent but he was still able to let the air out of Mr. Henderson’s tires and to put red dye into the Jacuzzi when little Miss Reach was dozing. She woke up, assumed she was bleeding and began to scream to the full capacity of her ninety-year-old lungs. When a stem to stern, inch by inch examination by a number of bystanders proved that she wasn’t bleeding, she was rather disappointed. Her whole life had been passing before her eyes and she was just coming to an interesting part.

That same week Charity Nelson reached retirement age. She didn’t tell her boss, Smedler, or anyone else at the office, since she had no intention of retiring. Instead she celebrated by herself with two bottles of Cold Duck. Halfway through the second bottle she became quite sentimental and decided to phone her first husband, who lived somewhere in New Jersey. By the time she’d tracked him down to Hackensack and learned his phone number she couldn’t remember why she was calling him.

“Hello, George. How are you?”

“It’s three o’clock in the morning, that’s how I am.”

“Your clock must be wrong. Mine says twelve.”

“Who is this?”

“Oh, George, how could you forget our anniversary?”

“I’m not having an anniversary. You sound stinko.”

“George, I am stinko.”

“Who the hell is this, anyway?”

“This is me,” Charity said. “Me.”

She hung up. Men were beasts.

In mid-June, Grady Keaton returned to work at the Penguin Club. The girls brought the news home as their contribution to the dinner entertainment that night, but the Admiral was dining out and Iris was confined to her room, so they had only Miranda to contribute it to.

“That lifeguard is back again,” Cordelia said. “The one who locked Frederic Quinn in the first aid room. Remember, Miranda?”

“No.” Miranda raised an empty fork to her mouth, chewed air, swallowed. “No.”

“You were there.”

“I don’t remember.”

“I do,” Juliet said. “All hell broke loose. And afterwards Frederic threw up all over your dress and everybody could see what he’d been eating, ugh.”

“This isn’t a very appetizing subject for the dinner table, Juliet.”

“It doesn’t bother me.”

“Or me,” Cordelia agreed. “I don’t see why it’s all right to talk about food while you’re eating it but not when you throw it up.”

“Stop it, girls, this very minute... Now let’s start over on a more civilized level. Tell me what you did today that was interesting.”

“We already told you about seeing the lifeguard who’s back working at the club. We forget his name.”

“Grady,” Miranda said. “I think that was his name — Grady.”

She went down to the club the next afternoon while the girls were at a movie. She stood outside looking in at the pool through the glass door. Grady was leaning against the steel frame of the lifeguard tower, his arms crossed on his chest, an orange-colored visor shading his face. He seemed smaller than she remembered, as though someone had located a vital plug and let some of the air out of him. He had shaved off his mustache — some girl probably asked him to or asked him not to. She wondered how many girls there’d been in the eight months and three days since Pasoloma.

She wanted to leave, to go back to the Admiral’s house and hide in her room, but she couldn’t force her limbs to move. She stood there for such a long time that one of the porters came out of the club and asked her if she needed help. He was a young Mexican who spoke the Spanglish of the barrio.

She said, “No, I’m fine. I was just about to leave.”

“Okay?”

“Yes. Thank you. Muchas gracias.”

“Por nada.”

He reminded her of the boy in the dining room of the clinic, Pedro. Grady had promised him a ride in the Porsche, but Grady wasn’t very successful at keeping promises. The instant they rolled off his tongue they rolled out of his head and heart. I never said anything about marriage or commitment or forever... Jeez, I’m not a forever-type guy, Miranda.

Poor Grady, he didn’t recognize what was good for him, he would have to be forced into doing the right thing.

As soon as she returned home she called Ellen. She used the kitchen phone because it was the only one in the house not connected to any of the others and nobody could listen in.

Ellen answered. “Penguin Club.”

“Ellen?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you tell me Grady is back?”

“I wasn’t sure how you’d take it.”

“I’m taking it very well, thank you. How long has he been here?”

“A week.”

“A whole week and you never said a word to me.”

“I intended to, but—”

“Are you trying to keep us apart?”

“You are apart, Miranda. You’ve been apart for a long time.”

“No,” Miranda said. “Not for a minute. Perhaps Grady doesn’t realize it yet, but I do. He came back here to see me.”

“He needed a job and Mr. Henderson agreed to rehire him.”

“That’s simply a cover-up.”

“Miranda, please—”

“Oh, I won’t rush him. I’ll give him a little time to adjust and then I’ll arrange a meeting. I’ve saved enough money to buy a whole new outfit. Grady likes soft silky things.”

“Stop it, Miranda. He hasn’t even asked after you.”

“Of course not. He’s too subtle for that. He wouldn’t ask you anyway. It’s been obvious from the beginning that you’ve had a hopeless crush on him.”

“You just won’t listen to reason, will you?”

“Not yours,” Miranda said. “You’re not my friend anymore.”

To celebrate the July Fourth holiday Mr. Henderson planned a special event for the club. It was his most inspired idea since the Easter Egos costume ball where everybody came dressed as the person they would most like to be resurrected as. (Toward the end of the evening two of the resurrectees, Héloïse and Abelard, staged a knockdown drag-out fight. This didn’t spoil the party, since it was generally viewed as part of the entertainment, especially the choking scene. A number of volunteers gave Héloïse artificial respiration, but she survived anyway and a good time was had by nearly all.)

The July celebration, which Henderson called a Wing Ding, was given the theme Unidentified Flying Objects. Denied a special permit for a fireworks display on the beach in front of the club — fireworks were illegal throughout the state — Henderson rented a barge and had it anchored offshore as a base for the fuegos artificiales he’d brought across the border from Tijuana. The display was a great success until the Coast Guard literally cast a damper on it by dousing the barge with a firehose.

Henderson wasn’t the only miscreant. The police and sheriff’s deputies were busy all over town trying to enforce the ban on fireworks. From the barrio along the railroad tracks to the elegant old streets which zigzagged up through the foothills the night was alive with the explosions and flashes of homemade bombs and mail-order or under-the-counter shooting stars and Roman candles and whiz-bangs.

An extra loud explosion at 122 °Camino Grande attracted no special attention until a passing motorist saw flames shooting out of a window and called the fire department. By the time the flames were extinguished Iris Young was dead.